Many applications for analyzing data provide the facility to graph data against horizontal and vertical axes. In addition, many of these applications offer the facility for the user to “zoom in” to a particular region of the data by drawing a box around some of the data. This feature is sometimes referred to as a “marquee zoom.” For example, a user may draw a box around a section of the plotted data. The application may then “zoom in” to the data by redefining the domain and range of the plot that are viewable on the screen to the domain and range of the drawn box.
Often, a user may want to zoom along just one axis of the plot (e.g., to focus on a few values on the vertical axis but maintain the full range of values on the horizontal axis). In a standard marquee zoom this would necessitate the user to accurately draw a long thin rectangle, which is difficult and likely to miss some of the data that the user is interested in viewing.